Conservative group forces The View to apologize for defamation

Cockburn has never much liked The View. If he wanted the opinions of pampered women on current events, he’d just tune in to the Democratic caucus. Yet color him astounded that the conservative group Turning Point USA (TPUSA) recently served the gabfest a cease-and-desist letter after they compared TPUSA’s Student Action Summit to neo-Nazis.

On the July 25 broadcast of The View, cohost Joy Behar said:

Neo-Nazis were out there in the front of the conference with anti-Semitic slurs and, you know, the Nazi swastika and a picture of a so-called Jewish person with exaggerated features, just like Goebbels did during the Third Reich. It’s the same thing, right out of that same playbook.

Although this is in no way coherent, Behar was associating neo-Nazis with TPUSA and the conference itself. Other comments included a false claim that TPUSA was affiliated with the GOP.

After their commercial break, the hosts begrudgingly read a clarification, trying to smooth things over until the ever-eloquent Whoopi Goldberg decided to dig the ditch even deeper. She said, “But you let them in, and you knew what they were,” and “my point was more metaphorical, that you embraced them at your thing, I felt.”

TPUSA then issued its cease-and-desist letter. Fox News got the statement:

The false statements of fact intentionally made during The View’s July 25th segment were unquestionably harmful to TPUSA’s reputation and brought the organization and its student affiliates into disrepute with the public, potential donors, and current and future business partners, posing a significant financial loss to the organization.

Long story short, while The View did apologize, TPUSA wanted the apology straight from the horse’s mouth — from Whoopi Goldberg herself.

As for Whoopi, Cockburn can only hope she’s learned to mind her words. She got in trouble for a Holocaust gaffe only a few months prior, and she’s still recovering from the fallout. Anything positive Cockburn has to say about Goldberg is limited to her roles in Muppet movies, and even then those were few and far between.